A popular and effective way of accessing television programming is via a satellite or cable television broadcast receiver or “set-top box” designed to receive television video and audio data from an orbiting satellite or a cable television headend. By employing such a set-top box, a subscriber to a satellite or cable television service provider may receive any of several hundred programming channels providing news, sports, entertainment, and the like for live program viewing. In addition, the set-top box may include a digital video recorder (DVR) for recording programs for subsequent playback at a time more convenient for the subscriber. A DVR often incorporates a magnetic disk drive or similar data storage technology for storing the recorded programs.
To provide the subscriber more remote access to live or recorded programming received by the subscriber's set-top box, Sling Media, Inc. has developed a number of products, such as the Slingbox™, which allow the subscriber to stream programming from the set-top box over an Internet connection to a remote communication/display device, such as a computer, mobile phone, or the like, in the possession of the subscriber. To further enhance this capability, some set-top boxes are being developed which include the functionality of a Slingbox™ to allow the subscriber to retrieve programming directly from the subscriber's set-top box over the Internet.